Context: the built environment and sustainable travel

This chapter considers the built environment and the potential impact of its configuration on walking and cycling. First we examine key facets of the built environment and how it has been conceptualised. Second, we consider how the built environment might shape travel behaviour and the policy response. Third, we briefly highlight previous research that has attempted to investigate the link between built form and travel behaviour. Finally we present the results of our spatial analysis and demonstrate their significance within the broader context of understanding factors that affect household decision making in relation to journeys on foot or by bicycle. The built environment is generally defined as that part of the physical environment created by human activity, including land use patterns and distribution of activities across space; buildings; transportation systems and their infrastructure such as roads, rails, pavements and cycle lanes; and the arrangement and appearance of those physical elements through urban design (Saelens and Handy, 2008). Urban form is a broad term used to describe the physical characteristics and arrangement of the built environment in relation to its size, shape, land-use pattern and street configuration. Dempsey et al (2010), for example, categorise urban form into five broad inter-related elements: density, housing/building type, layout, land use, transport infrastructure. The morphological attributes of urban form can be described from the city scale right down to the spatial arrangement and layout of a single housing development (Williams et al, 2000). It is these concepts that we address in this chapter.

There is considerable interest in, and debate about, how urban form affects sustainable practice, particularly in relation to travel behaviour. One concept that has gained currency is that of the ‘compact city’ (Jenks et al, 1996; Jenks and Dempsey, 2005) which advocates a halt to decentralisation and urban sprawl through a process of urban containment and the development of higher density housing in proximity to a mix of everyday activities on existing land in urban areas. It is argued that this approach reduces travel distances and promotes a shift to sustainable methods of travel such as walking and cycling, leading to an overall reduction in transport energy consumption and related emissions (Hillman, 1996). Since the early 1990s, the European Commission has been an influential advocate of compact urban form (Commission of the European Communities, 1990).